Last Man
by Erica T
Summary: He never thought that he would be the last man standing.


I was in a funny mood when I wrote this today, and oddly enough it's the first CSI:NY fic that I've actually finished in a while. I have so many half-formed ideas going on that I have at least a dozen fics sitting half done and it's irritating me. But I figure I'll get them right one of these days.

Disclaimer: I own zilch. If I did, I wouldn't be worried about my current unemployed situation.

Warnings: Future-fic, Past tense character death on a mass scale, probably a heavy dose of Angst. Don't shoot me.

Last Man

He stared at the assorted collection of gravestones. Of the entire team, he'd never expected to be the one to live the longest. He'd always assumed that he would die in the line of duty, and now, one week from retirement, it didn't look like that assumption was going to be coming true. Fate's cruel sense of humor, he supposed. He normally didn't let himself think so darkly, but here in the cemetery with them, his mind could wander back through the years. Remember the deaths.

The women had died first. Not because of any cosmic arguement that women weren't suited for police work, it was just the way that it happened. Aiden had been first, very early on. Her death had been a shock, and unfortunately, could also have been avoided, if only they'd been able to put away her killer the first time he'd gone to trial. Despite the fact that she had no longer been a police officer at the time, she died doing what she'd been born to do, serve and protect. Her death had likely saved a countless number of women from a similar fate. She'd been buried as a police detective, with her badge. It was the least that she deserved. But she had died with her entire life still ahead of her, and to this day, that caused a pang of sorrow in him.

Stella had been next, around ten years later. He'd been at the scene, as had Mac and Danny, and several other uniformed officers. The suspect responsible for the original crime, a murder in a crowded shopping mall, had returned to the scene with a high powered rifle and had begun firing. He'd taken a bullet to the arm, three uniforms had also taken rounds, one had been in critical condition. But Stella...Stella had taken a shot to the chest, she had been the shooter's first target. She had been wearing a red top, easy to get a bead on. He wasn't sure if the shot had been a through and through or not, he couldn't remember. What he did remember, was the devastated look on Mac's face when he told them that Stella had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, that her last words had been, 'Get him for me.'

Lindsay had died five years after Stella. She and Danny had been on their way to a scene, a multiple homicide in the Bronx. That case had been Detective Thacker's, but he'd taken the call to an officer involved hit and run accident about twenty minutes after he knew that Danny and Lindsay had left, headed in that same direction. When he'd arrived on the scene, EMT's were lifting Lindsay out of the passenger side of the car, which was crumpled beyond recognition. Danny had already been taken to a hospital. A drunk driver in a Ford pick up truck had barrelled through the intersection on the red light, hitting the passenger side, and knocking the car into a third vehicle, which had been stopped on the other side of the intersection. The witness who called 911 got a licence plate and they put the guy away. Danny was unconscious for three days, but Lindsay never woke up. She succumbed to her injuries two weeks later, leaving behind a grieving Danny, and their thirteen year old daughter.

After Lindsay's death, everything had spiralled out of control. He had made Lieutenant a year after Stella's death, and a turn of events going on in the police department not long after Lindsay's accident left him with a promotion to Captain of the Homicide division, and consequently, he wasn't able to keep a better eye on his friends. Danny had started down a path of self-destruction, not so much looking for trouble, but definitely not taking precautions. In the years after Lindsay's death, Danny had unsurprisingly been called on the carpet for reckless behaviour. He'd lost count of the number of times Danny had been restricted to lab work. And he'd lost count of the number of times he'd found Danny sitting at his desk staring at Lindsay's picture. There had been a rough couple of years that he now regretted, because he couldn't help but feel that he'd failed Danny somehow. In those years, Mac retired from the force. The job of CSI Supervisor had been offered to Danny originally, but Danny had turned it down, not believing that he was capable of accepting such a responsibilty when considering the way he had been affected by his wife's death. The position had gone to Hawkes instead. The first couple of years had been strange, a whole new team of CSI's, new leadership. He'd worked scenes with them still, but nothing was the same.

And then Mac died. His death was sudden, and the only one of the team to have been natural causes. Mac had never been the same after Stella's death. No one had ever known for sure if there had been more there than just a very close friendship, but everyone knew that her loss had been a hard blow for him to take. The romantics in the lab liked to say that he died of a broken heart, and they would be right, to a point. He'd suffered a heart attack in his sleep, odd, considering he'd been healthy and had no familial history of heart problems. Hawkes was a romantic at heart, but even he thought that the circumstances were a bit strange. There had been an investigation, and Hawkes and Danny discovered that after Stella's death, Mac had just stopped caring, and stopped taking care of himself. Mac's death was ruled as natural causes in all official reports, and they had buried their friend and mentor next to Stella, a decade after they'd buried her next to Aiden.

Danny's recklessness caught up with him five years after that. With his daughter now graduated from college and well on her way into her own career, in the back of his mind, he felt that she didn't really need him anymore. Often times, he would find the other man staring deep into a glass of beer and lamenting that fact, and he would have to remind him that no matter how old or how successful a girl is, she still needs her father. And he actually thought that he'd gotten through to him on that point. He got a frantic phone call from Emily Messer one night, her father had been called out to a scene several hours ago, and he hadn't called to check in with her like he normally does, could he please see if he could find him for her? He could never deny her anything, he'd always had a soft spot for her, came with being practically family. He'd made a few calls and found out that Danny had gone out to a B&E earlier that night, and no one from that scene had been heard from since. Finding that a little bit strange, he called Hawkes and they went out to the scene on a hunch. When they got there, they found Armageddon. Whatever had happened, it had left nearly everyone dead, and Danny was missing.

The next twenty four hours had passed in a blur of activity, trying to piece together what had happened, as near as they could figure, the suspect had returned to scene and surprised them, killing the uniforms and kidnapping Danny. The officers had both been stabbed. The third officer on the scene survived, and when he woke up in the hospital, he reported that Danny had been trying to negotiate with the suspect before he'd blacked out. No ransom note was ever recieved, and Danny was never seen alive again. His body turned up in a warehouse twenty four hours after his disappearance. He too had been stabbed, twice in the chest, once in the back. Danny had lived long enough after the stabbing to write a short note on a scrap of paper, apologizing for failing Emily. He'd stood beside Emily at the funeral, the only family she had left, and when he'd tried to tell her how sorry he was, she'd stopped him. He would never forget what she'd said to him that day.

"It's all right. You know how lost he was without Mom. I've been worrying about him for ten years, and for ten years he's been lying to me to reassure me that he's fine. Now, he's with her again, and we can both find a little peace."

Sheldon Hawkes had never been as close a friend as the rest of the team had been, but since it was just the two of them left, he was the only one he could share memories with. Their friendship was never be the same as the one that he'd shared with Danny, but he was okay with that. After all, no one could ever replace Danny. They'd spent many nights over the last ten years trading stories, experiences, bonding over beers. Occasionally, other people would join them, Kaile Maka for one, until her death in a suicide bombing incident a few years previously. But mostly, it was just the two of them, sharing laughs and beers until last call.

Hawkes had died during an arson case. The arsonist enjoyed returning to the buildings that he burned, and setting the remains on fire, if they hadn't burned to the ground already. He was nothing, if not thorough. Two years away from retirement, Hawkes shouldn't have been at a scene like that, but he still enjoyed the job, and the shift was tapped out, Hawkes was all that they had. He hadn't been at the scene. He'd heard the officer down over the scanner and arrived in time to see the paramedics zipping up the body bags. They had been trapped in the re-lit fire, and had died from smoke inhalation before the firemen on the scene were able to dig them out. This would be his last major case. Yesterday, they had caught the man responsible, and he was going to jail for a very long time. He had buried Hawkes that morning.

It occured to him, standing here at the graves of the six people he'd come to know so well, that he'd been coming to this cemetery for thirty five years. After Aiden's death, over three decades ago now, they had all agreed that they would be buried with her. It was in all of their wills, as a team they had stood together, and as a team, they would rest together. Over the years, he'd half expected one of them, any of them, to change their minds and be buried elsewhere. But no one had. He hadn't either, his place was reserved in the plot next Danny. Aiden was buried in the middle, Stella and Lindsay on either side, Mac next to Stella, Danny next to Lindsay. Hawkes was buried next to Mac. He breathed deeply and wondered what the chances were that he would die on the job in the next week. He decided that they were slim to none.

Someone stepped up beside him quietly and touched his arm.

"Uncle Don?" He didn't look at her, he didn't need to.

"Yes, Emily?"

"I've just been speaking with the grounds keeper. He says that it'll be ready to go in tomorrow, if you wanted to be here." Emily Messer told him, tucking her arm under his. He nodded.

"I do. I'll thank him for it tomorrow." They were silent for a moment, their gazes resting on the six headstones of their friends and family.

"What are you thinking about?" Emily asked him. He sighed deeply.

"I just realized that I've been coming to this cemetery for thirty five years, and now, I'm suddenly feeling very old."

"You're not that old, Uncle Don." Emily told him sincerely. And he wasn't, really. But compared to the rest of his friends, he was.

"I just never imagined that it would be me, standing here like this. I never pictured retirement, or if I did, they were all here with me. I just always figured that I'd be the next to go."

"Well...this time you will be." She said sadly. He smiled grimly.

"Yeah. This time I will be. Well, Emily-bear, what do you say I treat you to some lunch?" He used the age-old nickname he had for her, bringing a smile to her face.

"Yeah, sure."

They turned together and walked away from the collection of graves.

"Uncle Don? Why are you having all their headstones replaced with a monument?" She asked him as they walked. He shrugged.

"We were always a team. It just seems more right for us all to be part of something more than the sum of the parts. To tell the truth, I'm surprised nobody thought of it before now." He said. She nodded, but he knew she didn't really understand, nobody ever would.

"Will you tell their stories again? Over lunch?" She asked him. He laughed. She was thirty-three, had her own career and her own family now, yet she still loved to hear the stories of their mis-adventures and daring escapades that he used to tell her when she was a child.

"You've already heard all the stories."

"I know, but I like it when you tell them. And you like it too."

"All right, I'll tell them all again, but it'll be a very long lunch."

He opened the car door for her and waited until she was seated and buckled in before he shut the door. Before he opened up the driver's side door, he took one more look at the cemetary, at the gravestones he could just barely see. When he closed his eyes, he could still see them all as they had been long ago. Aiden with her teasing grin standing under and umbrella outside of an abandoned monastery. Stella, frightened, but determined to remember what had happened in her apartment, determined to have an answer. Lindsay bravely chomping down on a deep-fried spider that had been a leftover from one of Danny's cases. The amused look on Mac's face when he collected five bucks from Danny because Lindsay had actually eaten the spider. Danny's smug grin whenever he got the better of somebody, that somebody generally being Lindsay. The cool, calculating look that Hawkes had when he was figuring something out.

When Captain Don Flack Jr. opened his eyes, he decided that as long as he could remember them as they had been, remember everything that had made them such a good team, he didn't mind being the last man standing so much anymore.


End file.
